For one thing, if you happen to have a phone with you, you might be tempted to use it to look up "Subarachnoid Brain Hemorrhage" a day after having just suffered one. As it was, I read exactly one and a half sentences before deciding the "no cellphone" policy was a good one and tucking mine away. Even now, two and a half weeks after what's come to be called "the event" and a week after my release from the hospital, I'm still not keen to read about it.

"Do you have a phobia of the dentist?" one of the nurses asked, searching for clues as to what might have caused my brain to start bleeding while sitting in a dentist's chair. She thought maybe my blood pressure had spiked.

I had to think about it. Did I have a phobia of the dentist? No, not really. But I had to admit: "I do now." I could feel my blood pressure rise as I thought about returning to the dentist to have him finish the work he started. "No rush," I said, attempting to calm myself.

My dentist is in New Jersey —recommended to me by my sister. His office is about an hour and a half south of my apartment in Brooklyn, which isn't terribly convenient, I have to admit. The drive back and forth from Brooklyn can easily eat up a good four hours. In order to make it worth while, after my appointment I generally try to squeeze in a visit with my mom and dad, who live about 20 minutes further down the Parkway. However, since this particular appointment had been scheduled for late in the afternoon, there wouln't be time for any of that. I planned to just whiz down the Parkway, get my tooth fixed, and zip on home.

One of my molars had chipped and broken — most likely due to incessant nightly grinding ‚ and I was getting a crown. It is a two step procedure, and I was there for part two. It didn't take very long, twenty minutes, maybe, and the dentist was putting on the finishing touches, making sure my bite was aligned, and so on.. Another five minutes and he probably would have been done, but I had to stop him. "I feel really weird," I said, "I better test my blood sugar."

As a Type 1 diabetic, it's not unusual for me to interrupt something at an inopportune time in order to make sure my blood sugar isn't dropping. I felt so strange that it seemed like a good guess, but my blood sugar was fine. I tested again, just to be sure. It wasn't low at all. In fact, it was slightly elevated. Nothing too extreme, however. Nothing to cause me to feel so bizarre, anyway. Suddenly, my head began to throb like a kick in the head. As I lay back in the dentist's chair. I began to feel numb, as if the Novocain had travelled through my entire body. Then, out of nowhere, I began to vomit — all over the poor dental assistant. I tried to sit up, but I couldn't move my legs. Everything closed around me as if I were walking backward through a grey-green tunnel. A neon crystalline pattern crossed my vision in a psychedelic swirl. "What's happening?" I said. I thought I was dying. Who wants to die in a dentist's chair? Who wants to die at all?

i couldn't see him, but I heard the dentist over my shoulder: "What do you need? Has anything like this had ever happened to you before?" He wasn't sure what to do.

"No," I said. "I have no idea what's happening. Please call 911." I struggled to stay conscious, fearing that if I let go, I'd never come back. I thought about my wife, Deborah. I didn't want to leave her behind.

The dental assistant ran her hand through my hair, trying to comfort me. I remember it felt nice. From there, the world became a blur.

In retrospect, there are worse places to have a brain hemorrhage than a dentist's chair. The parking lot, for instance, or while cruising along the Garden State Parkway. Just about anywhere, really.

The EMTs arrived, got me on a stretcher and into an ambulance, and took me for a short drive to the nearest hospital, but I only remember vague, gray snippets. An EMT saying, "Hang in there buddy, we're going to take care of you." Another one asking questions like, "Do you know what year it is?" My eyes felt cramped and seemed to be pointed in different directions. Nothing was making sense.

In retrospect, there are worse places to have a brain hemorrhage than a dentist's chair. The parking lot, for instance, or while cruising along the Garden State Parkway. Just about anywhere, really.

The dentist phoned Deborah, who was listed as my emergency contact. He couldn't offer her much info about what was wrong with me, but he did know which hospital I was headed to. He told her I was having seizures, but I'll have to take his word for it. Deborah had no way to get to the hospital so she called my mom and dad, who rushed as fast as they could (which generally isn't very fast) to the hospital. Apparently, they were there for several hours, but I have no recollection of seeing them, other than a vague memory of hearing my mother's voice say, "Ooh, those are nice boots," as they pulled off my shoes and put them into a plastic bag, along with the rest of my personal belongings. I don't recall getting a Ct scan, I don't remember having a catheter poked through a vessel in my groin, snaked up into my brain in order to squirt dye and take pictures.

Eventually things came back into focus, like waking from a dream that you don't remember, and I felt totally fine —at first, that is — and I imagined getting out of the hospital the next day, if not sooner. I found my phone and called Deborah, who later told me I wasn't quite as clear headed as I thought I was. I kept asking her what day it was and whether my parents had been there to see me. "I can sort of remember them being here, but I don't know if it was a dream or not." She assured me that my parents had, in fact, been there, and that it was Friday — roughly 24 hours after the event. She also told me that, after my mom and dad spent the day with me, they went home, exhausted, only to both become ill themselves — food poisoning, it seemed, or maybe a stomach virus. While rushing to the bathroom, my mother had taken a fall and wound up in the Emergency Room, too. A different hospital or we might have been roommates.

In the meantime, Deborah arranged to get a ride to New Jersey from our friend Jason. They drove first to get my truck, which had been left at the dentist's office, and then caravanned to the hospital. By the time they arrived to see me, it was Saturday and my optimism about an early release had started to wane. I had a dull headache, felt nauseated, and utterly beat up. "You're going to feel that way for a while," the neurologist had said. "You had a pretty serious thing happen to you." But I was alive, at least, which gave me a certain feeling of gratitude, but three or four days of headaches and nausea has a way of diminishing a person's spirits.

One night, as the nurses changed shifts, the nurse who had been there when I was admitted came on duty again. He asked me my name, where I was, what year it was, who was president. I hesitated at that last question, thinking perhaps Trump was a dream, but no, I got everything right. "Much better than when they first brought you in," he said. "You thought you were in Brooklyn, then Canada. You said it was 1948, 1977. You were all over the place."

Like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughter House Five, Jamie Boud has become unstuck in time.

I didn't remember providing answers so wildly off base and found it disturbing. I chalked it up to having been sedated for my tests. Although I wasn't 100 percent sure I had been, it was hard to imagine having a catheter in my brain any other way.

While my mother remained in the hospital, Deborah stayed with my father, who was still feeling pretty wiped out from his own illness. Deborah had only recently gotten her driver's license, but braved the New Jersey traffic to visit me every day — a half hour in each direction from my parent's place. Lots of practice!

Meanwhile, I had an ultrasound performed on my head three days in a row, and another Ct scan and, after five days in the I.C.U., the neurologist was confident enough to move me to the neurology ward on the fourth floor where I roomed with a 92 year old WWII vet who entertained me with stories of train trips across America. I had trouble following along. "Sorry I'm not much company," I said. He didn't care.

Once I'd been moved out of the ICU, and was on the mend, Deborah headed back to Brooklyn to get some work done and care for our two cats. They say that anxious people tend to do well in a real emergency — they are in their element — but once Deborah arrived home, and everything had a chance to sink in, Deborah suffered a mini nervous breakdown. I could hear the strain in her voice when we spoke, as if her chest were bound with twine, the muscles in her neck like pieces of wood. I tried to reassure her I was fine, but the less she had to worry about in the moment, the more time she had time to reflect on what happened and what a close call it had been. She felt helpless.

As I got better, I had an anxiety attack, too. I woke in the middle of the night with flashbacks I saw patterns of light and felt like I couldn't move. I struggled to reach the nurse's call button. When the nurse arrived, she gave me a few simple tests — had me touch my nose, read a few sentences from a card and so on. "Everything seems fine. Do you suffer from anxiety?" she asked me.

"I guess I do," I said, as I tugged at my gown, soaked with sweat. After all, the whole saga had started in the dentist's chair, where I was having a tooth fixed. It had broken in two due to repeatedly gnashing my teeth at night like a rabid wolverine. Suffer from anxiety? Yeah, I suppose I do.

After a couple days in the neurology ward, the doctor figured I was ready for release. "You look worried," he said.

"Well, aside from spending the entire week in bed, I haven't had a chance to think about everything. I guess I feel a little overwhelmed."

"Listen, when something like this happens to someone, yours is the kind of outcome you want to see. Your tests all look good. Better than good. We'll schedule a follow up in a week or two, but I really don't think you have anything to worry about."

The plan was for me to recuperate at my mom and dad's house for a few days. Deborah was back in Brooklyn and my father was still feeling a little weak from his illness — and was also taking care of my mother who had finally been released from the hospital herself — so I arranged for the hospital to call me a cab. "They're running behind," the nurse told me, "they'll be here at four o'clock."

At three thirty, a volunteer rolled a wheelchair into my room to take me to the front door. "I have a lot of stuff," I said.

"Not too much, I hope. I can't carry anything for you."

"I'll just pile everything in my lap, but I don't want to rush, I don't want to forget anything."

The volunteer was irritated and impatient. He kept telling me to call the cab company as we waited. "They said they'd be here at four," I said. "It's only ten 'till."

"Well I can't wait around."

I asked him how he got involved in volunteering. He obviously wasn't happy doing it.

"When I retired, my wife told me I should do some volunteer work. I told her she should do volunteer work. Anyway, I've been doing it for six years now and I'm over it. Any monkey can work for free."

I told him he should quit. He wasn't doing anyone any favors.

He pawned me off on another volunteer, a Vietnam vet from Hawaii who pulled up a wheelchair next to me and was happy to just hang out and shoot the shit. "Take it easy," he advised me. "Trust me. When I got back from Vietnam, I tried to do too much too soon. I felt like I had so much catching up to do. Take it slow."

When the cab finally arrived, it was a rolling ashtray. There was another passenger already inside so I sat in the front seat.

The woman in the backseat had just been released from the Emergency Room after a domestic dispute with her mother. The cabbie was supposed to drop her off at the police station, but she wanted to go to her mother's place, instead. They compromised and she got out at the library, across the street from the police station. The cabbie explained the situation to me saying, "I figured you were curious." But I really wasn't. I just wanted to breathe some fresh air, lie down, and go to sleep. When I finally got to my parent's house, I ate a little, and did just that. I slept most of the following day, too. But after a few days, something turned south and I began to get sick. Whether it was related to my brain hemorrhage was hard to say, but when I couldn't quit vomiting gallons of brown acid, my mother made an executive decision and called an ambulance. Only three and a half days after being released, I was back in the ER.

I had my head scanned again, but there didn't seem to be any problems there. They gave my gut an ultrasound scan and discovered "numerous gall stones" but didn't think they were responsible for my symptoms. A stomach virus? Maybe. I had a slight fever. My blood sugar was a little out of whack, but vomiting will do that. In the end there was no definitive answer, but after another 24 hours in the hospital, I stabilized and began to feel pretty good. Weak and stiff, but hungry.

Before anything else had a chance to go wrong, I made plans with my friend Brian to get me home. He took a bus from NYC in order to drive me to Brooklyn using my truck. He arrived on Friday night and we left bright and early Saturday morning.

And here I am, now. Home. Feeling better every day and hugging my wife every chance I get.